On Tue, 7 May 2013 04:37:04 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:


We had a tornado 5 blocks away a while back and it scattered an entire park
full of tall 2' foot wide oaks like pickup sticks. If you are in the direct
path of a tornado, no amount of bracing is going to help a typical
residential structure.

Not bracing, but I've heard that attaching the roof well to the top
floor of the house can greatly decrease the chance of the roof coming
off in a tornado. That most roofs stay on by gravity and the nails
just help. But where they've learned to use whatever they recommend
now, even in tornadoes the roof will likely stay on.

I rode around after the storm and took pictures and
one was of a poor guy standing in front of his split-level home that was
split in half

Wasn't it split in quarters, if it was already split?

by a massive oak tree that had been almost 50' away from the
house. The tree was tall enough so that the top of the trunk cut the house
like buzzsaw. He had this "stunned mullet" look on his face that officers
used to get after being chewed out by Gen. Schwartzkopf